Top 10 things more valuable than post graduate studies

I teach marketing part time at Melbourne University, and many students come and ask me about what they should do in their post graduate studies. I tell them that post graduate studies are useless unless you want to be an academic or scientist. So here’s a top 10 list of things to do instead of post graduate studies which will make you more learned, more employable and a better entrepreneur:

1. Learn a language (Mandarin or Spanish would be my recommendation)
2. Start a blog (on the area you want to be an expert in)
3. Master the art of public speaking
4. Make your home Eco friendly
5. Mentor someone
6. Read one non fiction book per month on a new topic
7. Learn a musical instrument
8. Learn to grow food
9. Renovate something (car, dinning setting, local park, house, tree house, anhything that can be renovated)
10. Do a part time startup business.

The reason suggestions are more valuable than post graduate studies is that they create wide perspective, most post graduate studies narrow perspective. We are entering the age of symphony, where the real value in life and business is created by our ability to make commercial music from seemingly unrelated topics and ideas. Broadening your horizons will make you a better conductor of the symphony, or at very least give you some very interesting stories to share with those you want to do projects with.

Add your better than more ‘formal’ studies idea in the comments.

How to monetize

I’ve never been a fan of the so called ‘Free’ business model, and often a bigger fan of the so called ‘pay to play’ business model. While catching up with Mick Liubinskas of Pollenizer fame I heard a much better way to describe what all business models on the web should do.

First: Create Value

Then: Capture Value

I reckon Mick should call it the CV model for VC’s. It kinda works. The thing that really works in my mind is that it doesn’t mention arbitrary things like Advertising, Members, Margins or Timelines. It just reminds us that all startups must build something of value and then find a way to capture that value. Maybe the capture of value is financially? Maybe that value is captured directly or indirectly? Maybe there’s a large lead time between the two? One thing for sure is that it doesn’t limit our viewpoint.

The authentic phone message challenge

I’ll start by saying the concept of getting customers to “hold” on a telephone is a pretty bad idea. Then I’ll tell this story….

Today I was on hold for Optus telecommunications, which gave me a reasonably standard phone message:

“Your call is important to us. At this time we experiencing high demand for our telephone support staff, and we’ll be with you as quickly as we can. Please hold the line for the first available operator.”

Here’s what I seriously would prefer to hear:

“We’ve made a deliberate choice to only have X number of people to answer our phones. They are incredibly expensive and having any more than this would impact our profit too much. We’ve done studies which have worked out the number of people that hang up for waiting too long, and how much revenue the average phone call generates or loses for us. The number of people employed to answer our phones is just about optimal. We check this every few months. The average wait is about 5 minutes, so it’s a cool idea to put the phone on load speaker while you wait. Then you can do other stuff. If we answer and you’re not at the phone immediately, we’ll do you the the same favour of waiting a bit while you run to the phone to talk to us once we actually answer. We hope you appreciate our honesty. We reckon it’s better than giving you a load of shit that tells you how important you are. Cheers.

And so the challenge goes out to any startup or business is prepared to develop the worlds first authentic phone message be sure to let us know here at Startup blog so we can spread the awesomeness.

There’ll also be a prize for the best comment with a phone number to a company that has a message of this ilk – and the prize is $100 Amazon gift voucher.

Cool hunting – The tail of two movies

Yesterday I was sent links to two movies which were both entrepreneurial in nature / marketing related. Both revolve around the idea of paid brand ambassadors. One is a documentary on how clever ‘cool hunters’ are, and the other was a Hollywood fabrication of brand evangalists are infiltrating our circle of trust.

The Documentary trailer: The Influencers

The Hollywood trailer: The Joneses

The question it leaves in my mind is whether social media facilitates more authentic or inauthentic ‘hidden’ brand evangelists.

Helping your community

Blogger, thinker and all round nice guy Ben Rowe recently wrote a blog entry just for me. There was nothing in it for him, he just thought it would be nice to share his intellectual prowess for my benefit.

How it came about was pretty simple really. Ben wrote a great blog post on the importance of gaming and how it is starting to transcend currency. Within my comments on his post I spoke of how great it would be to think of a good gaming mechanic for rentoid. A few days later Ben wrote this blog post with some ideas on how to do exactly that. It’s the kind of commercial world I want to live in. An ethic where people do cool stuff for others without asking, and not expecting anything in return. The corollary is that a a return does invariably happen.

Firstly, an emotional return from doing good. Secondly, a collective return from building community. And sometimes a financial one from those who return the favour.

The question for startup entrepreneurs is this:

What are you doing to build your industry community help and promote others?

Tweet worth sharing

Wrote this tweet this morning and thought it was worth sharing here for any entrepreneurs who are in the process of selling their wares and aren’t on the twitter wagon yet.

It is easier to say ‘No’ to a piece of paper, than it is to a person.

100,000 eyeballs for $8

If you want to know how to get your brand exposed to 100,000 people for $8 then we need look no further than what David did.

You may remember this post where David go his Jarritos soft drink van all branded up. Well, he took the next step in exposure and got to the AFL grand final early for a front row car park near the MCG for a measly $8. As far as I can tell it’s one of the greatest media investments of all time – there were 100,000 people in attendance. See photo journal below. Great startup bootstrapping David.

Click Z column

ClickZ.com, is a large resource of interactive marketing news, information and commentary.

Their mantra a simple one: to help interactive marketers do their jobs better.

I recently wrote a piece for them about the web being everywhere and what it means for brands. Click here to read it.

Top 10 list – Words redefining business

Here’s a little list of words that keep ringing in my head that I feel are changing the way we do business. I’ve written them each with a few thoughts beside them to stimulate your own view.

1. Gifting - an emerging gift culture started with sharing information freely (Blogs, photos, ideas on the social web). This will start to iterate into a culture of providing actual goods to each other as gifts
2. Gaming – human existence is defined by counting and gaming. Currency, bank accounts, salary, frequent flyer miles… and now smart phones will turn many brand relationships into games we can play. In many ways it will replace currency.
3. Real time – the web used to be a repository of information written, found and filed for later retrial. It’s evolving into a what’s happening now forum. With live check ins (four square), live video (Qik / Ustream), status updates (Twitter). This will change they way we buy and interact on a commercial level.
4. Geolocating – will permeate everything we do, and all the messages we receive.
5. Community – it took the democratization of media via the web and fragmentation of media channels before we could regain our desire to interact at a community level, not just a consumer level. And we like it. We’ll never let people break down our communities again. It’s a social requirement we have built into our DNA.
6. Apps – software is now personal. The difference with apps is that they are malleable. We co-create the code as we interact with them.
7. Screen culture – TV isn’t dead, it’s just changed. It’s now web enabled and everywhere we go. Count how many screens you see today.
8. Global currency - we now have perfect information on currency and conversions via the web. Our ability to arbitrage is being diminished. It’s only a matter of time before we create a global currency that crosses borders and oceans and automatically adjusts prices of everything we buy to a single lowest global price delivered. This has already happened historically as our world got bigger. First at a tribal level, then state level then national level. The globe is next.
9. Related revenue – We’ll start making money less from what we actually do (writing a blog? / Google search?) and more from the stuff we do that lives around the edges.
10. Project careers – Our careers wont be about having jobs, but a number of smaller iterations of projects that interest us. They’ll be higher paying, with breaks in between. This will be more profitable for all parties. Companies wont have the overhead drain of full time staff, and humans wont have the social drain of turning up to a place of work when there isn’t much on. We’ll transform what we do more frequently and fluently, we’ll be projecteers.

Promote yourself

I often wonder whether or not advertising on work cars is a good idea. Especially given it is in many ways one of the negative sides of business – distribution, busy road, pullution. It might remind consumers that the brand is part of a large corporate monolith. You get the picture. But I’m starting to think this is different for startups.

Firstly, we’re only likely to have one or two vehicles out on the road. Secondly, it’s a good way to create brand awareness cheaply. A colleague of mine who has started a beverage company Jarritos Mexican soda has done just this. At a cost of $2000, he’s invented $50,000 worth of advertising. Which is what branded cars cost via media agencies. See below.

The key element to doing this successfully is making sure the vehicle and advertising matches the brand. For example, an environmentally friendly business should really only partake in such branding if it’s prepared to invest in hybrid / electric vehicles.

Would you advertise your startup on your car? In addition is there an opportunity to start a business branding civilian cars and in doing so helping the general population pay for their transport?